…or, Friendly Conversation
Thirty minutes seemed like enough time for Violet to come back down a little and get her shirt back on. It also gave Marlot time to hunt me up for dinner. She took the news that I’d invited friends along better than I’d expected. I suspected she didn’t think much of Barley.
There wasn’t time for much of a game, so we built a house of cards while we waited.
“Think we’ll be able to get them to play?” Marlot asked.
“I have a feeling we wouldn’t be able to take them for much,” I said. “Anyway, do you want to play cards with a telepath?”
“I want to play cards with somebody,” Marlot said. “Supposedly there’s a huge floating cups game somewhere on campus, but it’s sure as heck not here.”
“Freshmen dorm,” I said. “How many kids played cards in high school? I bet we’d get more takers on the other floors.”
Violet announced her arrival with a knock on the open door. She brushed a purple-tinted lock out of her face and ducked her head as she stepped through the threshold, like she thought she would bump it on the top of the frame. She was carrying a rectangular red fabric lunchbox with rainbows on the sides.
“What’s up?” she said. She’d put on a slinky purple turtleneck with ribbed sleeves that swallowed most of her hands.
“Hey,” I said. “Have you guys met?”
“We’ve bumped into each other,” Marlot said. “I like your hair.”
“Thanks,” Violet said. “I like your leg. Hat. I like your hat.”
“Yeah, it’s my favorite leg hat,” Marlot said.
“Where’s Barley?” I asked.
“She’s just disposing of some evidence,” Violet said. “You wouldn’t believe how she can smuggle beer.”
“I’m sure she’s the life of the party,” Marlot said. “Talking of smuggling, you aren’t planning on sneaking your own food into the food court? Because that’s a hanging crime around these parts.”
“Oh, yeah, I don’t eat anything that’s been magically or alchemically processed,” Violet said.
“So that was certified organic, all-natural beer?” I asked.
“Darn skippy,” Violet said. “The way Mama Kh intended it. Actually, I used to not eat anything that had to be killed to be harvested, but that was just too hard to keep up.”
“What does that leave you, anyway?” I asked.
“Seeds, fruit,” she said. “Some leaves, though I kept going back and forth about those.”
“You could still eat milk and eggs under that definition,” Marlot pointed out. “Actually, you could eat meat, too, as long as you had a very understanding cleric standing by.”
“Oh, no way,” Violet said, shaking her head. “I haven’t eaten meat since third grade.”
“Is that a telepath thing?” I asked.
“It’s a me thing,” Violet said. “Our school was kind of rural, and we had a field trip to a slaughterhouse. Most people would just block that kind of thing out, but I’ve never been big on that kind of thing. I don’t like walls. Never have. In fact, when I graduate and make a little money, I’m going to buy a big patch of land out in the middle of nowhere where it’s cheap, and make a house with no walls.”
“Just a floor and ceiling?” I asked.
“No ceiling,” she said. “Maybe a floor.”
“So, you’re going to have a patio in the middle of nowhere,” I said.
“The way I figure it, you get a modern house built and it’s going to have all these spells layered onto it to keep pests out and the weather off anyway, right?” she said. “So why not skip the walls and just have the spells?”
“What about privacy?” I asked her. I remembered who I was talking to, so I added. “Security?”
“Middle of nowhere,” Violet said. “It doesn’t get more secure and private than that.”
“If I lived in the middle of nowhere, I’d want big stone walls,” Marlot said. “Actually, I kind of want those, anyway.”
“Like a prison,” Violet said.
“Like a fortress,” Marlot said. “Maybe I’ll be an old school-style wizard, with a big old stone tower.”
“Rock,” Violet said.
“You can sit down, you know,” I said, gesturing to the empty couch.
“Thanks,” she said. She sat down on the floor beside our card house.
“So, you’d really live in the middle of a bunch of defensive spells, without a real house?” I asked her.
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe get some friends together to help share expenses. We’ll either do it here or in one of the desert provinces, somewhere that still has more land than laws. Just set up our own little society.”
“Yeah, and you’d see how much good your own society does when you get raided by bandits,” Marlot said.
“She’s cheery,” Violet said to me.
“She’s Marlot,” I said, and shrugged. Violet’s plan sounded like the smokiest of pipe dreams to me, but I didn’t see any need to piss all over it.
“Is it true that telepaths don’t lie?” Marlot asked. The way she said it, I knew she knew it wasn’t. She was just tweaking Violet the way she tweaked me about my elveness.
“That’s a lie made up by telepaths,” she said. She shrugged. “I’m maybe more honest about what I’m thinking, but only because I have to stop and think to even realize other people don’t already know it. It’s absolutely insane to me that I can be sitting there in the middle of class thinking up the weirdest shit in the world, and nobody knows it but me.”
“What kind of thing do you think about in class?” Marlot asked.
“Oh, anything, really,” Violet said. “Sometimes I imagine the building’s on fire or under an orc attack and I plan out my escape route. Other times I figure out how I would assassinate the teacher and then work out an escape route.”
“Sounds like there’s a whole lot of escaping going on,” Marlot said.
“You never heard of escapism?” Violet asked.
“Touche,” Marlot said, and she grinned. Violet had won a point of approval from Marlot.
“Oh, here comes Barley,” Violet said. Seconds later, Barley stumbled into sight. She was still wearing Violet’s bra, and a scarf. She was out of breath.
“So many stairs,” she said. “I’m never going to get used to stairs, no matter how long I spend indoors.”
“You should come live with me,” Violet said. “My house won’t have any stairs.”
“You guys all ready to go, then?” I asked.
They nodded. I grabbed my keys and we set out.
“Anybody mind if I smoke?” I asked once we were outside. Nobody did. I realized that Violet already had a cigarette lit.
“So, Violet told me you got turned into a deer, James,” Barley said. “Is that true?”
“Of course it’s true,” Marlot said. “Telepaths never lie. They can’t. Don’t you even know that?”
“Well, of course I do!” Barley said. “I just wasn’t sure she’d heard right.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “It’s an elven thing, apparently.” I held up my wrist with the stag bracelet on it. “It’s not a big deal, really.”
“Try telling that to Amaranth,” Barley said. “She’d have a lot of fun with that, let me tell you.”
“Do you have to tell us?” Marlot asked.
“Yeah, come on,” I said. “Enough about Amaranth. She doesn’t matter.”
“She doesn’t,” Barley agreed. “So, that was what you were talking about this morning that you didn’t want to get into?”
“Yeah,” I said. I gave Violet a look. “It was.”
“Sorry,” Violet said. “I didn’t know that was a secret.”
“Didn’t pick that up?”
“Hey, I’m not always eavesdropping on your room, every single second that you’re in there,” she said. “I do have other interests. The sun doesn’t revolve around you and you alone, you know.”
“Well, since we all know about it,” Marlot said. “Who thinks he’s crazy for not dumping the guy?”
“It does seem like a pretty big breach of your personal body autonomy, James,” Barley said.
“Body, shmody,” Violet said. “What’s in a body? If I could turn into a bird, I totally would.”
“But there’s a difference between turning into something and being turned into it,” Marlot said.
“There can be,” Violet said. “But if somebody came along and turned me into a bird, I’d totally thank them, anyway.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Marlot said. “Because you’d be a bird.”
“I could be a mynah bird or a raven,” Violet said. “Or a crow.”
“I don’t think crows can talk,” I said.
“No, they totally can,” Violet said. “My high school had crows for a mascot, and so there was a flock of them that hung out on campus. The janitor taught them to swear at people and then laugh evilly.”
“Murder,” I said.
“What?” Violet asked.
“A group of crows is called a murder,” I said.
“Unless they have a really good lawyer, who can bargain them down to manslaughter,” Marlot said.
“Anyway, there are flocks of intelligent crows in the woods, and they didn’t seem to know any language besides crow-ish,” I said.
“Are you calling me a liar?” Violet asked.
“No, I’m saying in my opinion, under ordinary circumstances, crows can’t talk,” I said. “Maybe they were ravens, or maybe they were magically altered, or maybe the janitor knew a voice spell or two to fuck with them.”
“Or maybe you don’t know everything about crows,” Violet said.
“Amaranth tried to teach some crows to talk,” Barley said.
“Did she succeed?” I asked.
“No,” Barley said.
“Well, there you go,” I said.
“I wouldn’t take that as proof either way,” Barley said. “She tried to teach the pigs to read and write, too.”
“I believe you, Violet,” Marlot said.
“No, you don’t,” I said. “You just want to keep the argument going.”
“That’s true, but I’ll take it anyway,” Violet said.
“He didn’t believe me when I said there were nymphs on campus,” Marlot said.
“What were the crows like?” Barley asked. “The ones in the woods?”
“Like crows,” I said. “Only smarter and more psychotic. Territorial, too. You have to negotiate for passage through their territory.”
“How do you do that if they don’t speak?” Violet asked.
“There was some cawing involved,” I said.
“How did you pay?” Barley asked.
“Bread,” I said. “Bread as in bread, not money. Iason did it, really. I was just along for the ride.”
“That doesn’t seem like a very good basis for a relationship,” Barley said.
“We had words about it,” I said. “It was a rocky start, but I think we have an understanding now.”
The conversation continued as we passed the fountain and headed towards the union. The girls were good company. As much as it seemed like we were bickering in every direction, it wasn’t a bad conversation. I could already tell the difference between the sniping that had occurred between Missy and Marlot and this. There was a certain amount of boundary-testing left to be done, but nobody was prickly or thin-skinned enough that we couldn’t bicker a little.
When we got upstairs and Violet pulled out two little bowls of rice and nuts, Marlot asked her if she wanted some milk for her cereal. Violet tried to return the favor with a summary of the probable living conditions of the chicken on Marlot’s salad, but it was fruitless. Agora was a pretty rural-ish town, too. Marlot and I knew where our food came from.
“Don’t mourn the chickens,” Marlot said. “Just know that when they die, they go on to a better plate.”
